Databases store various types of information. This information may be encoded, sorted and stored by the database so that it can be accessed, or retrieved later. A problem that may arise is that databases encode, sort and store using different schemes, making it difficult for a single system that has access to different databases to retrieve data from one database and store it into another.
The following description pertains to FIG. 1. The data in a database 30 is, usually, manipulated in some fashion. Manipulation of data may be carried out by a data manipulator 10, typically called an "Activity." A data provider/consumer 20, typically called a "Link," may be provided to enable an Activity 10 to access a database 30. In typical operation, an Activity 10 may make a request of one or more Links 20 to perform certain operations, for example, connect to an external system, produce a set of results from a search and read or write data or metadata. Other operations are possible. For example, a list of names can be sorted alphabetically by performing a sorting operation within the database. A problem that may arise is that different databases will perform this operation in different fashions. For example, one database could sort the characters "B/C" as coming before the characters "B-C." Another database might reverse the order of sorting for these characters. Subsequent attempts to access the data in the two databases could then result in a discrepancy in the sorted lists. Another problem that may arise is that different databases may store data in different formats. For example, what one document database stores as a single data element could be stored in a relational database as multiple related elements in different locations. Other problems also exist.